History

1925–1960

Texas Tech played its first intercollegiate football game on
October 3, 1925. The contest, against McMurry University, ended in a
controversial 0–0 tie. Tech's Elson Archibald seemed to have kicked
a game-winning 20-yard field goal but the referee ruled that the
clock had run out before the score. It was later reported that the
referee made the call to get revenge because he wanted to be the
team's first head coach but the job was instead given to Ewing Y.
Freeland.[3]

Over his four years, Freeland coached the team, known at the
time as the Matadors, to 21–10–6 before handing the reins to Grady
Higginbotham. Higgenbotham coached for one year, 1929, which saw only one
win and two ties to seven losses. His winning percentage of .200 is
the worst of any Texas Tech football coach. Pete W. Cawthon replaced Higginbotham in
1930 and led the team for
the next eleven seasons. His winning percentage of .693 has not
been surpassed at Texas Tech.[2][4]

For its first seven years, the program was independent, not
belonging to an athletic conference. It was during Cawthon's
service—in 1932—that Tech first
joined a conference, the Border
Intercollegiate Athletic Association, which included five other
schools at the time. Several other firsts occurred during Cawthon's
tenure. In 1934, the team was first
referred to as the "Red Raiders".[5] Three
years later, the 1937 squad became the first team in college
football to fly to a game.[6] Later
that year, they received their first postseason invite—to the 1937
Sun Bowl, where they were
defeated by West Virginia, 7–6.
The following year, Cawthon led the team, which is the only one in
the program's history to have an undefeated regular season, to the
Cotton
Bowl Classic where they lost to St. Mary's,
20–13.[7]
Cawthon's 1939 team set a still-unbroken NCAA record for most punts
during a single game. Playing in a driving rainstorm, Texas Tech
punted 39 times, while their opponent, Centenary punted 38
times. The combined punt total of 77 is also an unbroken NCAA
record.[8]

The next two coaches after Cawthon each held the position for a
decade. Dell Morgan
started in 1941, garnering a 55–49–3 record which
included three bowl appearances that ended in losses. In 1951, DeWitt T. Weaver started his run. At the
end of it, he held a record of 49–51–5. During his time, Weaver
coached the Red Raiders to their initial
bowl victories. The first came against Pacific in 1951 Sun Bowl. The
next came two years later in the Gator Bowl. The 1953 Gator Bowl, a 35–13 win
over Auburn, is most memorable for
the first official public appearance of The Masked Rider:

“

According to reports
from those present at the 1954 Gator Bowl, the crowd sat in
stunned silence as they watched [student Joe Kirk] Fulton and
Blackie rush onto the football field, followed by the team. After a
few moments of stunned disbelief, the silent crowd burst into
cheers. Ed Danforth, a writer for the Atlanta Journal
and a press box spectator later wrote, "No team in any bowl game
ever made a more sensational entrance."[9]

”

Texas Tech withdrew from the Border Intercollegiate Athletic
Association in 1956 and was independent for the ensuing
three years. The school had tried eight times to gain admittance to
the Southwest Conference and had been denied. After the 1952 rejection, many Tech fans cut up their
Neiman Marcus
charge cards and mailed them back to the Dallas-based retailer. Legend holds that, in
response, Stanley
Marcus helped sway SMU's vote in Tech's favor.[3][10]

1961–1985

J. T. King became
the coach of the Red Raiders in 1961. In his nine years, he fared no better
nor worse than the man he replaced. With 44 wins, 45 losses, and
three ties, his winning percentage of .495 was very close to
Weaver's .490. One of the wins under King was on September 18,
1965, when the Red Raiders beat Kansas, 26–7, in the first
intercollegiate football game to use instant video replay.[11] King
led the team to two bowl games but they were both losses.

The win column saw an upswing under coach Jim Carlen (1970–1974) who finished his five
years with a winning record of .644. Steve Sloan (1975–1977) did slightly better
with .657. The team's second postseason win came under Carlen when
Tech beat Tennessee in the 1973
Gator Bowl. The only bowl tie in the program's history came the
following year in the Peach Bowl, 6–6 vs. Vanderbilt. The Red
Raiders were not invited to a bowl in 1975 but returned to postseason play in 1976, losing to Nebraska by three in the
Bluebonnet
Bowl. Tech's appearance in 1977 Tangerine Bowl, where they lost 40–17
to Florida State, was to
be the last time the team saw postseason play for nearly a
decade.

With the arrival of Rex Dockery, the program would, for the
second time in its history, enter into a period of two successive
coaches who would return overall losing records. In three years,
Dockery coached the Red Raiders to 15–16–2. Jerry Moore took the position in 1981.
During his five years, he posted the second-worst record of any
Texas Tech football coach, only .309. The final tally, though, only
tells part of the story since many of the losses came in close
games. In 1982, #1 Washington, playing at
home, beat the Red Raiders by only a single touchdown. Later in the
season, #2 SMU was also only able to squeak by on a single
touchdown. In Moore's final season, four of Tech's seven losses
were by a combined six points.[12]

1986–2010

Upon Moore's release, the job was given to David McWilliams.
In spite of not even staying an entire season, he was able to
garner a record of .636 and return the team to postseason play.
McWilliams departed to become the head coach at Texas, and Spike Dykes took over
at Tech just before the 1986 Independence Bowl where the Red
Raiders were edged out, 20–17, by Ole Miss.

Dykes bowl game and the 13 complete seasons that followed set a
record as the longest stay for any Texas Tech football coach.
Although tallying 67 losses and a tie, his 82 wins also set a
record as the most victories for a single Tech football coach.

It was in 1996, during
Dykes's tenure, that Texas Tech joined the Big 12
Conference. The team has the distinction of being the only one
in the Big 12 to have a winning season each year since the
conference was created.[13]

When Dykes departed in 2000, Texas Tech hired Mike Leach, who eventually became the
winningest coach in school history. He is also the school's
all-time winningest coach in postseason play, competing in a bowl
game each year during his stay and garnering a 5–3 record. Behind
only the Texas Longhorns, the Red Raiders are second in the Big 12
for postseason wins since 2000, having won six of their last ten
bowl games. In the 2006 Insight Bowl, the team defeated
the Minnesota
Golden Gophers, overcoming a 31-point deficit in the third
quarter to beat their opponent by three in overtime.[14] This
made NCAA Division I FBS (formerly I-A) history as the largest
come-from-behind bowl victory ever recorded.

In July 2007, ESPN ranked all
119 FBS (formerly 1-A) football programs on performance from 1997
to 2006 and placed Texas Tech at number 32.[16] Also,
with 13, the Red Raiders rank fourth nationally in consecutive
winning seasons, trailing only Florida State (30), Florida (19),
and Virginia Tech (14).[17]

Described as a program on the rise, the Red Raiders earned 56
wins from the 2000 season through the 2006 season. During the same
period, only three other Big 12 teams had more victories—Oklahoma,
Texas, and Nebraska.[18]

Prior to the 2008 season,
Ruffin McNeill was made the Red Raider's full-time defensive
coordinator. The team remained undefeated for the first X games of
the season and, on November 1, 2008, the Red Raiders (ranked #5 in
the Coaches'
Poll, #6 in the AP Poll, and
#7 in the BCS Rankings
defeated the #1 (in all polls) Texas Longhorns.[22][22]
A pass from Graham
Harrell to All-American wide receiver Michael
Crabtree with 8 seconds remaining in the game led Tech to a
39–33 victory. This marked the 500th win in program history and the
first win over a #1 ranked team. Billed as the most significant
game in Texas Tech history, the game was broadcast nationwide on ABC. It was the
fifth-most viewed telecast of any regular-season game in ABC
history, drawing a 7.5 rating, meaning an average of 8,590,000
households tuned in to the contest during each measurable
segment.[23] It
also attracted the largest home crowd in school history.[24][25] The
win also catapulted the Red Raiders to the number-two spot in both
major polls, as well as the BCS rankings (and as high as number one
in some computer rankings). They also became the second Red Raider
team to win eleven games in the regular season. However, Tech would
go on to lose two games—a conference matchup at Oklahoma and the Cotton Bowl Classic versus Ole Miss.

On December 30, 2009, Texas Tech fired head coach Mike Leach for
allegedly mistreating Adam James, an injured player.[28]
Leach's record at Tech stands at 84–43. Following Leach's
departure, Defensive Coordinator Ruffin McNeill was named the
interim head coach and led the team to a 41–31 victory over the Michigan State Spartans at the
2010 Alamo
Bowl. Texas Tech finished the 2009 season ranked #21 in the AP
poll, and #23 in the USA Today poll.[29] On
January 9, 2010, former Auburn University head football coach
Tommy
Tuberville was named the new head coach for the Red
Raiders.[30] On
January 12, 2009, Neal
Brown, from Troy was selected as the new
offensive coordinator.[31]

Logos and
uniforms

The Red Raiders football uniform consists of any combination of
the red, black, or white jersey with red, black, or white
pants.